Customer Reviews

Garbage World

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Science fiction author Charles Platt has dreamed up a novel idea for handling the mammoth mountains of trash generated by our ever-affluent societies. In his future the garbage in loaded into "blimps" and towed and deposited upon one of the larger asteroids. A problem ensues when the inhabitants object to the ten-mile high deposit of earthly trash accumulation on their adopted "home". One solution is to split the asteroid: trash goes away and peace is restored to the inhabitants - of course there are complications.

Although not a book I would recommend an environmentalist I did not trash it. It is an interesting story with a somewhat unbelievable premise.

Charles Platt has written a smattering of novels and short stories from the 60s to the 80s; none of which have been out-right successes, save for a handful of 1970s Prometheus award nominations and a John W. Campbell award nomination. I've only read one other novel by Charles Platt: The City Dwellers back in March, 2010. His writing in that novel never struck me as memorable and only tidbits of flashbacks about the plots reoccur to me. Because of the author's elusive span of work, I was interested in one of the more popular items in his bibliography: the rather generically titled Garbage World.

Rear cover synopsis:
"Life on the small asteroid Kopra, the dumping ground whose sole function was to receive specially packaged waste material from surrounding pleasure worlds, was harsh and dirty. Carefully avoided by Off-Worlders for centuries, Kopra and its rough and ready, filth encrusted inhabitants suddenly became the object of extraordinary interest to officials from the United Asteroid Belt Pleasure World Federation [UABPWF]. What happens when the two opposing cultures meet; the super-sanitary citizens of the Pleasure World and the filthy underfed villagers makes an adventure as exciting as it is bizarre."

Oliver Roach is an Observer and Recorder of Data under the direction of a pompous Minister from UABPWF (Zone 2). Oliver's mission is to simply assist the minister in disseminating information about the planned temporary evacuation of the planet for ten days, as the gravity generator keeping the planetoid together is in need of replacement. The once modestly-sized asteroid 100 year ago has since become a dumping ground for garbage from the entire Federation. Now, the asteroid is piled 10-miles deep of ecru sludge, jagged protuberances, and radioactive debris. Once the temporary evacuation is complete, the Koprans can return to their malnourished, alluvial, squalid but still quite happy existence.

Oliver works for Minister Larkin, whose "pride is too great and his mind is too inflexible" (121) yet must span the bridge between the opposing cultures. His unwillingness to adapt to the crude local ways is countermanded by the impudent mannerisms of the local headman, Isaac Gaylord. Once superficially soiled, Oliver allows the dankness to penetrate his thinking, too. With the assistance of a mud-covered love interest, Juliette Gaylord, Oliver becomes accustomed to the filth which surrounds him and joins the Gaylords on a mission to contact the nomads on the asteroid for evacuation. Oliver soon learns that the mission could have been a fateful one because of the minister's ulterior motives for the planetoid's fate.

I found the civilization living on the garbage planet of Kopra to be most interesting. They are scavengers by 100-year nature, living off the, sometimes perfectly good, unwanted items of so-called more civilized planets (draw comparisons here with Western mass consumption). When the fanciful Pleasure Federation drops in and says, "Hello, we need to change your planet. Get off it!" then the garbage inhabitants get a bit upset. Eve though they've regressed to "the drinking, the dirt, the dancing and the debauchery" (33) they still have some positive qualities about them: family, utility, and pragmatism.

The planetoid of Kopra requires a sense of suspended belief, where rain is "thick and viscous, a sickly yellow-brown color. Particles of dirt float inside the amber liquid. It trickles slowly over his skin like foul-smelling syrup." (81-82) The gravity is only 0.75 earth standard and the sheer amount of rubbish which lays in a 10-mile deep strata is impressive. Yet still, the humans adapt and live off the land, scavenge for food scrapes, amass sentimental hordes of junk, brew moonshine, and generally get on with gettin' on. It's wholly admirable, in a rather hygienically decadent way.

Much like the forgetful prose found (or not found) in The City Dwellers, the drive behind the plot is non-existent. It sadly plods along amidst a great setting with semi-likable characters but it never gains much steam; I'd hardly call is exciting like the synopsis mentions. Even the so-called climax of the plot is more of a mild ascent to a temperate plateau followed by a lethargic waving of pyrotechnic sparklers.

If there's one more Platt book to keep an eye out for, it'll be his 1991 John W. Campbell award nominated book The Silicon Man... but everything else by Chalres Platt seems to be as mediocre as the two novels I've read. Little hope for anything spectacualr to come out of Platt, but if my 120+ book collection ever becomes in need of replenishment, I may look his way once again.

It's been decades since I read this book, but I liked it. To me, the environmental aspect of the situation was secondary to the main point of the story, which was actually a sort of Freudian parable. In the novel, there is a near perfect split between inhabitants of the asteroid who embrace garbage (metaphor for excrement) and sensuality versus everyone else, who are compulsively clean and inhibited. The protagonist succeeds in ditching his inhibitions by finding true love with an uninhibited, free-spirited young woman who seduces him in a pile of much, thereby proving that one can touch messy, dirty, taboo things and not only survive, but enjoy it immensely. Once he recognizes and accepts the resulting changes in his outlook and his personality, he becomes a much healthier, much more well-adjusted person, and not only that, he also becomes more intelligent and exposes a nefarious plot to save the asteroid and its neighbors in that region of space!

In the cultural milieu in which it appeared, Garbage World was one distinctive voice among a deluge of others asking the day's youth to question the assumptions of society and to shake off the shackles of convention to find one's true, if messier, self.

I have students using this book for an environmental reading/writting project. So far the reviews from them have been great.

'Garbage World' is set on a small asteroid literally made of garbage. (It has tons and tons of soil, jungles, and weather though...) The inhabitants of the world are written as filthy, smelly, and primitive. Yet they each have working T.V.'s (on an asteroid, yeah) in their hovels. Water is scarce, yet alcohol is extremely plentiful. By the way the village headman (Isaac Gaylord) is described, everyone has lice and bad teeth. No one bathes.

The plot is the gravity generator stopping the atmosphere of the asteroid Kopra from leaking into space is at about to fail. This will cause Garbage World to become space litter, something the other pleasure asteroids (that send their trash there, rather than recycling) will do anything to avoid. Note, the generator is set at 3/4 normal gravity, meaning the visitors from Off-World should be veritable supermen in lower gravity. The author never notices this little discrepancy.

The romantic subtext involves the man in charge of data collection (Oliver Roach) falling for a gross garbage girl.

Overall, I'm amazed the people on Kopra are alive, as dumped garbage apparently includes radioactive, medical, and industrial waste. At least the novel had a decent ending (stops it from being one star).

I have students using this book for an environmental reading and writing project. So far reviews from them have been great.